Helena Wulff
Helena Wulff is Professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research is in the anthropology of communication and aesthetics based on a wide range of studies of the social worlds of literary production, dance, and the visual arts.
Academic work
While her early research was on youth culture and ethnicity, Helena Wulff´s specialist skills now include expressive cultural form in a transnational perspective, visual culture, the emotions, and media, as well as anthropological methods. She has conducted field studies in Stockholm, London, New York City, Frankfurt-am-Main, and Ireland. Her current research is on migrant writing in Sweden. Drawing on her research, she teaches courses on Media anthropology, Visual Culture, Communication and Aesthetics, Anthropological Writing Genres, and Anthropological Methods.Helena Wulff has held visiting professorships at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National University of Singapore, University of Vienna, and University of Ulster, as well as a Leverhulme visiting professorship at University of East London. She was Editor-in-Chief of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, the journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and Vice President of EASA. She was Chair of the Swedish Anthropological Association. Helena Wulff is a member of the steering committee of the multidisciplinary research programme , funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences 2016-2021.
She is editor of the book series “Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology”, and editor of the book series “Dance and Performance Studies” Berghahn Books, Oxford, and a member of the advisory boards of the journals Anthropologica, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, AnthroVision, Cultural Sociology, Culture Unbound, and Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale.
Selected works
Books
- 2017: Rhythms of Writing: An Anthropology of Irish Literature. London: Bloomsbury.
- 2016: The Anthropologist as Writer: Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Editor.
- 2010: . Oxford: Berghahn Books. Editor with Marit Melhuus and Jon Mitchell.
- 2007: . Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2007: . London: Berg/Bloomsbury. Editor.
- 2003: . London: Berg/Bloomsbury. Editor with Christina Garsten.
- 1998, reprinted 2001: . London: Berg/Bloomsbury.
- 1995: Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. London: Routledge. Editor with Vered Amit-Talai.
- 1988: Twenty Girls: Growing Up, Ethnicity and Excitement in a South London Microculture. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 21. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Journal articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries
- 2018: “Diversifying from Within: Diaspora Writings in Sweden,” in Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport, The Composition of Anthropology: How Anthropological Texts are Written. London: Routledge, pp. 122–136.
- 2018: “Foreword,” in Lauren Miller Griffith and Jonathan S. Marion, Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Developing Expertise through Travel and Training. Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. vii-xi.
- 2017: “Stories of the Soil: In the Irish Literary World,” in Diarmuid Ó Giolláin and Martine Segalen, Irish Ethnologies. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 141–157.
- 2017: “Greater than Its Size: Ireland in Literature and Life,” in Ulf Hannerz and Andre Gingrich, Small Countries: Structures and Sensibilities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 301–316.
- 2017: ”Manhattan as a Magnet: Place and Circulation among Young Swedes,” in Virginia R. Dominguez and Jasmin Habib, America Observed: On an International Anthropology of the United States. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 31–50.
- 2017: “Global spridning av lokala teman,” Review article of Crime Fiction as World Literature edited by Louise Nilsson, David Damrosh and Theo D´haen. Respons, nr 6, pp 66–68.
- 2016: “Introducing the Anthropologist as Writer Across and Within Genres,” in Helena Wulff, The Anthropologist as Writer: Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–18.
- 2015: “Jazz i Ghana: Musik som kosmopolitism,” in Kulturella Perspektiv, 2: 34-38.
- 2015: “In Favour of Flexible Forms: Multi-Sited Fieldwork,” in Forum: Re-thinking Euro-Anthropology. Social Anthropology, 23: 355-357.
- 2015: “The Pains and Peaks of Being a Ballerina in London,” in Ilana Gershon, A World of Work: Imagined Manuals for Real Jobs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 207–220.
- 2015: “Ireland in the World, the World in Ireland”, American Anthropologist, 117: 142-143.
- 2015: “Dance, Anthropology of,” in James D. Wright, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol. 5. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 666–670.
- 2014: “”, in Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Christina Garsten and Shalini Randeria. Anthropology Now and Next: Essays in Honor of Ulf Hannerz. New York: Berghahn, pp. 147–161.
- 2013: “Ethnografiction and Reality in Contemporary Irish Literature”, in Marilyn Cohen, Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology. New York City: Lexington Books, pp. 205–225.
- 2013: “Dance ethnography”, in Oxford Bibliographies Online. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 2013: “Ways of Seeing Ireland´s Green: From Ban to the Branding of a Nation”, The Senses and Society, vol. 9, no.2, 233-240.
- 2012: “” in Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith and Jonas Frykman, Blackwell Companion to the Anthropology of Europe. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 537–550.
- 2012: “”, in Jonathan Skinner, The Interview: An Ethnographic Approach. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 163–177.
- 2012: “”, in Hélène Neveu Kringelbach and Jonathan Skinner, Dancing Cultures: Globalisation, Tourism and Identity. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 46–59.
- 2012: “”, in Marilyn DeLong and Barbara Martinson, Color and Design. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 101–109.
- 2012: “”, Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement , special issue on Performance in Circulation, vol. 17, no. 2.
- 2011: “”, Ethnologie française, Avril, 2: 301-308.
- 2010: ”Costume for Dance”, in Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, West Europe,: Volume 8: 498-502. Oxford: Berg/Bloomsbury.:
- 2010: “”, Nordic Irish Studies, 9: 109-116.
- 2009: “”, in Rebecca Pelan, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne: Perspectives. Galway: Arlen House, pp. 245–261.
- 2008: “”, in Narmala Halstead, Eric Hirsch and Judith Okely, Knowing How to Know: Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 76–91.
- 2008: “”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 17: 98-113.
- 2008: ””, Ethnography, 9: 519-536.
- 2007: “”, Identities 14: 527-544.
- 2006: “”, in Suzel Ana Reily, The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking's Ethnomusicology in the 21st Century. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, pp. 125–142.
- 2005: “”, in David Inglis and John Hughson, The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 171–182.
- 2005: “”, Body & Society, issue on “the dancing body”, Bryan S. Turner, vol. 11: 45-62.